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THE WAK AND 
EDUCATION 



By 

ANDREW F. WEST 



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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 




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THE WAR AND EDUCATION 



ADDRESSES 



BY 

ANDREW F. WEST 

DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOIi, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



Together with a Translation of the War Address of 

M. Lafferre, Minister of the French Republic 

for Public Instruction and the Fine Arts 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1919 






Copyright, 1919, by 
Princeton University Press 

Princeton, N. J. 

"Published 1919 
Printed in the United States of America 



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NOTE 

Four of the addresses, here printed with slight 
additions, were previously published in the Edu- 
cational Review, in School and Society or in the 
The Evening Post, 



PREFACE 

These addresses are collected in the hope they 
may help to keep the educational lessons of the 
war in vivid remembrance. It seems incredible 
that men should ever forget them. Yet many will 
do so as soon as the storm drifts awav. Our 
American schooling has been weaker on the side 
of memory than in some other directions, so that 
it has become only too easy to forget. If through 
failure to perceive and remember, we fail to 
embody the teaching of the war in our education, 
the loss to our nation will be enormous, because 
we shall lose the one new impulse which can both 
save and strengthen our entire schooling from 
beginning to end. That new impulse is the pow- 
erful revival of the belief in discipline and duty, 
as opposed to all sordid or sentimental theories. 
If it is forgotten or ignored, our schools and col- 
leges will sink lower. 

It was a profound truth which Anatole France 
put in those perfect words which picture the little 
deserted village thinking of her absent sons fight- 
ing for France : ''lis passent; mats je reste pour 



vi Preface 

garder leur souvenir, Je suis leur memoire, C'est 
pourquoi Us me doivent tout, car VJiomme riest 
Vhomme que parce quil se souvient,"^ 

^ Sur la voie glorieuse, Paris, 1915, p. 52, 



CONTENTS 

I. In the War 

1. Our Educational Birthright 1 

Delivered January 29, 1918, before the 
Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania 
State Teachers' Association at Johns- 
town. 

2. The Immortal Conflict id 

Delivered July 4, 1918, before the General 
Session of the National Education Asso- 
ciation at Pittsburgh. 

3. France and The Classics 35 

Delivered July 12, 1918, by M. LaFerre, 
Minister of Public Instruction and the 
Fine Arts at the University of Mont- 
pellier. 

II. The Close of the War 

4. The Humanities After the War 49 

Delivered December 5, 1918, before the 
Association of American Universities 
and the British Educational Mission at 
Harvard University. 



viii Contents 

5. Vocational and General Education 73 

Delivered January 16, 1919, at the An- 
nual Meeting of the Vocational Associa- 
tion of the Middle West at Chicago. 



OUR EDUCATIONAL BIRTHRIGHT 



OUR EDUCATIONAL BIRTHRIGHT 

While we are here to-day, thinking and talking 
of education, perhaps we are only half aware how 
nearly, in the vast world outside, the best things 
of civilization, the dearest hopes of mankind, are 
face to face with the deadly peril of quick and 
overwhelming disaster. And that disaster, if ac- 
complished, puts back the clock a thousand years. 
In the whirl of that cataclysm Magna Charta and 
the Declaration of Independence would be blown 
away as merely two more "scraps of paper." 

In this crisis, it is no time, either in the great 
outer world of war or in the lesser and inner for- 
mative world of educational preparation for life, 
for any wild theorizing, any panic-stricken 
clutching at this or that novelty, makeshift or 
panacea to help us, or for confused and unsteady 
thinking of any sort. It is the time for steady 
vision, straight thinking, search for the really 
durable things, deep deliberation, and then, as 
soon as we see the truth in new clearness, for a 
prompt, vigorous and universal obedience to it 
in action. For only those who are willing to be 
ruled by the actual, living, indestructible truth 

3 



4 The War and Education 

can ever be made fit to be free or to be of real 
use in this or any other time of the world's need. 

The war is changing much and changing it rap- 
idly. We are being hurried along. Whither? Al- 
ready we are aware that we are in a new age. 
The End of the World happened over three 
years ago. A New World is here. A Judgment 
of the Nations has begun. The supposedly edu- 
cated man who does not know this is mentally 
and morally defective. So far as he has influ- 
ence he does harm. He belongs with the "sub- 
normals." 

What are the things we can already see are 
changing? and into what are they changing? 
What are the things, if any, that are not chang- 
ing? These are the three momentous questions 
we must know how to answer if we are to be fit 
for our present duty as civilized men, especially 
if we are to be fit to take part in guiding the edu- 
cation of our youth so that they may be ready 
for their part when the load falls on their should- 
ers. This, it seems to me, is now the one supreme 
duty of all who care that our education shall be of 
help to our land in this time of fierce trial, soon 
to grow fiercer, and in the happier days we hope 
to see when the storm has passed. Here is "our 



Our Educational Birthright 5 

bit," and a big "bit" to do, and to do now in the 
cause of national preparedness. The new army 
of the young recruits of knowledge, few of them 
now well-trained, some half -trained, most of them 
untrained, must be all trained and well-trained — 
and without more ado or delay. Are we ready 
for this? Do we see the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth? see it clearly? see it 
soon enough ? and see it together ? If not, we shall 
deserve to be cursed. But if we do, we may give 
quick and powerful help at a time when such 
help, though late, is still in time to save. 

What are the things that are changing? O so 
many of them ! and changing so fast ! None of us 
can see them all now. Perhaps none of us can 
ever see them all. But with the fourth year of 
the war on, and its end not yet in sight, there 
has been time to see the chief lines and directions 
of the changes which are still shaping themselves 
before our eyes. Let us look at those which affect 
or ought to affect our education most powerfully. 

The first is a change in our attitude, a new 
aversion to self-indulgence, indifference, idleness, 
caprice and pleasure. We had been drifting too 
long amidst these things, like beings with juven- 
ile minds in adult bodies. 



6 The War and Education 

Behold the child ! by nature's kindly law 
Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw. 

"Nature's law" — for infants, but not for men. 
All Americans of intelligence who love their 
country more than their own ease, many of whom 
had been easy-going or inert before, are awake 
now. They see, in truer light, that these things 
are enemies of our land. We can stand outer as- 
sault, but not the inner softness of decay. The 
only question remaining is : Will they act now on 
what they see? If so, a great and lasting change 
for good in our education is assured. The idler, 
the slacker, the sloucher, the careless, the listless, 
the reckless, those who have been trooping in 
multitudes along the "line of least resistance" 
away from irksome duty, scattering among the 
various primrose paths on the way down-hill, will 
then halt and stand erect once more, listening for 
the call that shall tell them where they ought to 
go. "Do what you like" and "do what you 
please," in studies as in conduct, will then be dis- 
carded as a Devil's motto. How this will hit the 
officers and leaders of education who have en- 
couraged the weaker instincts of the ignorant, 
have played the politician, have thought more of 
their jobs than of their duty, and have commer- 



Our Educational Birthright 7 

cialized and sold like traffickers the sacred things 
of truth! It is time to drive the moneychangers 
from the Temple of Knowledge. Whenever par- 
ents really want this done, it will be done. And 
the sooner the better. 

The second change is a slowly forming change 
of positive purpose. The first change of aversion 
to the weaker tendencies of immature minds, old 
or young, is wholly good, but being primarily a 
negative reaction, is not enough to build on. 
Something more is needed, and something more 
is beginning to happen. When we turn away 
from the things that harm, it is of course the first 
needed step. As Horace wrote long ago of Vir- 
tue: "The first step is to avoid Vice." But only 
the first step. The second step, without which 
the first step leads us nowhere and may leave us 
ready to turn back the wrong w^ay again, is to 
start toward and keep on toward the things that 
help and strengthen. The first means "About 
face!"; the second means "Forward march!" 
We are taking the first step — facing right — in 
greater numbers every day and month. Can we 
take the second? If so, we shall win — win in 
making our boys and girls into the finest men 
and women, fit for our country's need. If not, 



8 The War and Education 

we shall fail, and fail not only in the time of 
greatest danger, but of the greatest opportunity 
this generation shall ever have. It is hard, no 
doubt — and yet supremely well worth doing. 
And to real men and women difficulty is merely 
another name for opportunity. If we are real 
men and women, we shall go straight ahead on 
this path, no matter what lions stand in the way. 
It would be interesting, if time allowed, to name 
some of the lions. Some of them are outside us. 
We need not fear these. Some, strangely 
enough, are inside — the most dangerous of all. 
They must be tamed or killed. 

What is the newly wakened positive impulse 
which shows us that this second step is the great 
step to take? and that, as we go on, we shall al- 
ways be surely on the right road? For this is the 
whole matter. Settle this, and questions of stud- 
ies will settle themselves. It is not so much: 
How far are we going? or How fast are we go- 
ing? but On what road are we going? How true 
the great word of Descartes on education now 
appears : 

It is better to go a short distance on the right road, 
than a long distance on the wrong road. 

Let us go as far as we can, of course. But let 



Our Educational Birthiight 9 

all who are in any way discouraged by their lack 
of travelling strength take heart if they are really 
going, even slowly, even with stumbling, even 
for only a short distance — yet on the right road. 
How I wish every boy and girl in Pennsylvania 
and outside might pluck up courage at this 
thought. Initium dimidium facti — "the begin- 
ning is half of the whole," "well begun, half 
done" — and the harder half too; these are the 
ever-old, ever-new words of cheer and good sense 
for the weakest boy or girl in school who at least 
wants to go right. 

Again we ask: What is the newly wakened 
positive impulse which is the basis for all our new 
educational hopes? It is the revival in might of 
the ideas of discipline and duty, the growing 
conviction that education is not the strolling here 
and there of multitudes of stragglers, but the 
orderly advance of great armies to a known ob- 
jective. Have we not seen it beginning? almost 
as soon as the first bugles blew? — as our sons 
rose up to judge us, standing erect and enduring 
sharp discipline, all over the land — offering their 
young strength and lives to save us — bravely, 
gaily, gloriously. Have we not seen it as our 
daughters turned in myriads to "stand and wait" 



10 The War and Education 

in the hospitals and prepared to carry their 
self-effacing heroism to tend our sons in the 
battle-lines? Have we not seen it in the self- 
imposed discipline now spreading all over the 
land? saving food and clothing and all necessary 
things, giving up all we can in time and work 
and money, doing it steadily and gladly, and all 
on one combined exacting plan. We are coming 
together at last. E plurihns unum again rings 
true. 

It is the old American spirit at last awakening 
again, the spirit which made and saved our free- 
dom — never, please God, again to go to sleep. 
Obedience, not to what we like or do not like to 
do, but to what we ought to do, be it hard or 
easy, this is what is now awaking in full might. 
If we heed it, it will purify, unify and invigorate 
our schools for generations to come. It will give 
us the power to base all our education on the one 
indestructible truth on which alone education can 
be built. So great is the opportunity our present 
difficulty brings us. Can we take it? 

Yes, these changes, if they spread far enough 
and go deep enough, will, of course, bring many 
other changes in their train. They will compel 
us to restudy our schools and colleges. In our 



Our Educational Birthright 11 

theory of studies, as well as of life, we shall have 
to abandon, once for all, many specious theories 
and alluring practices to which we have recently 
been indulgent. The captivating notion, happily 
now going out of vogue, that the student in 
school or college should study what he likes, when 
he likes, as he likes, if he likes, must be "interned 
or interred." To all so-called "free elective sys- 
tems," which are not systems at all, we must 
promptly say "good-bye" and "good riddance." 
In place of all this must come the conviction that 
so far as practicable in view of each student's age, 
capacities and future life-work, the few funda- 
mentals of universal value for training — ^not for 
tickling — the human mind should be the basis for 
all courses of study until the student is both suffi- 
ciently trained in power and is also made aware 
of his ascertained aptitudes. Then he should be 
left to choose for himself. In this way, as in no 
other, may our youth be advanced at least a suffi- 
cient distance on the right road to make it their 
own sole responsibility, and not ours, if they 
then choose to go a long way, a short way, 
or any way on any wrong road. This also means 
that if schools and colleges do not know enough 
to come to a fair agreement on the fundamental 



12 The War and Education 

studies (no room for politics here! inside or out) 
and to distribute them so that no essential is lost 
in any curriculum, meanwhile giving everything 
its true label — ^thus making every course of study 
sound in itself as well as easily recognizable, and 
all of them together, from bottom to top in every 
kind of education, standing for the harmonious 
unity in variety of the knowledge most valuable 
for training and informing the human mind — if 
they can not effect this with a fair amount of 
clearness, they can not make their case clear to 
the country, and will give evidence that they do 
not know their own business. And in arranging 
studies it must never be forgotten that to put 
intellectually inferior or loosely disjointed forms 
of education on a par in competition with the 
nobler forms is to drive out the best education. 
Such a course will reduce our land in this respect 
to a condition of dependent provincial mediocrity, 
by cutting off from the boys and girls of unusual 
promise a good chance to proceed — not a little 
way, nor half way, but all the way on the right 
road. A democracy without this chance well 
safeguarded and cherished is not a true democ- 
racy in education. This is the heart of the mat- 
ter. Can we give our education vital unity and 



Our Educational Birthright 13 

thereby gain immensely increased power for the 
cause of knowledge, truth, justice and the best 
things of human life? Not without clear agree- 
ment, not without the cooperation which springs 
from the unifying impulse of discipline and duty, 
not without the power to overcome chaotic dis- 
integration by a definite organization in which the 
individual will be willing to sacrifice or postpone 
some of his immature inclinations, harmless or 
perhaps even useful to him if he were the only one 
to consider, for the sake of the lasting good he 
will gain by common training in the essentials of 
knowledge. We do not need more studies, but 
fewer studies and more study. This is the one 
way to be thorough in our intellectual "prepared- 
ness." What we need is simplicity rather than 
a miscellany; the sustaining diet of the home 
table, rather than the confusing variety of the 
whole market; the things of central value first, 
and such of the rest as we like — afterwards. 

This means a lot of work to do — a great house 
cleaning in which loads and loads of trash shall 
be swept out and carted away as junk. For most 
of our people it means we must provide genuine, 
not foolish, vocational training, together with and 
not apart from real elementary schooling. The 



14 The War and Education 

secondary education in our high schools and acad- 
emies should begin two years earlier. Here, at 
the present time, is the place of greatest waste. 
We are the only important western nation with 
so short a period as four years for this stage of 
instruction. Make it six, and the good results will 
be doubled. That is, they will be doubled if the 
programmes are organized, in a very few types, 
on the basis of training the mind in essentials, 
rather than in the loose and confusing way which 
is still so common. And all loose, vague and 
shifting plans of college studies must "go." It 
also means that good teaching is something more 
than talking. Never mind what some of the 
psychologists tell us about "interest" and the ab- 
surdity of "formal discipline." Intellectual dis- 
cipline, if worth anything at all, can not be "in- 
formal" or casual or happy-go-lucky. However, 
if we are awake to the meaning of the war, we 
need not worry much about "formal" discipline. 
It will take care of itself and discipline its critics 
too. And if we are not awake, nothing can save 
us. History will then prepare to write our epi- 
taph among those who failed — failed to take their 
one great chance, 



Our Educational Birthright 15 

The tide in the affairs of men 

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. 

The tide is flooding fast to-day. 

I have tried to show sharply, first, what things 
are changing among us and, second, into what 
they are changing. Lastly, then, what things, if 
any, are not changing? Are there any? Yes. 
The laws of nature still hold sway. The law of 
gravitation is good for some time to come and so 
far as man can see, for all time to come. The 
tides still swing. The seasons pass in their an- 
cient order. "Day unto day, night unto night" 
— follow on the same as ever. The sun sets, the 
dews fall, the stars shine. The animals seem 
much the same. The bee still fills its honey-cup, 
the lark has not lost her song, the leopard keeps 
his spots. It is we, not they, who are seen to be 
changing — changing in our recent attitude and 
purpose. Otherwise, we too, though no doubt de- 
veloping, remain of the same nature as we were ; 
human in our good and evil, naturally doing now 
right and now wrong, ever rising or falling as we 
follow or fail to follow the best light we have — 
the light of truth, which alone shows the way to 
freedom. Truth is still at heart simple, clear, 
convincing, and error is still at heart tortuous, 



16 The War and Education 

malign, confusing. A lie is still mean. Treach- 
ery is still base. Lust and cruelty, the twin vices, 
are still detestable. Wisdom is still "better than 
riches" or pleasure or station or fame. Its price 
is still "above rubies" and all the lesser values of 
life. These are things that do not and can not 
change, or be disbelieved, unless moral chaos is to 
follow. 

What else does not change? The law of the 
mind. To know truth and especially the truths 
that underlie all knowledge and form the base 
for all sound opinion, to express that knowledge 
well, and to use all with wisdom in the guidance 
of life — these are still the marks of the best in- 
tellectual excellence. Experience alone still con- 
vincingly reveals the relative worth of studies. 
Follow it. Is reason worth having? Is memory 
worth having? Are the treasures of knowledge 
worth having? Is a well-trained mind worth hav- 
ing? Then train it well and use it in full power. 
Is the newly wakened conviction of discipline and 
duty one we are willing to follow? Then believe 
it, believe it and follow it — no matter how hard 
the effort, no matter if we get on only a short 
way at first, at least satisfied to find our feet are 
on the right road. The going will be better soon. 



Our Educational Birthright 17 

Here is where faith and knowledge join — faith 
leading the way. The light may be dim and dis- 
tant now — but it will brighten as we go on. No 
doubt it is a day of trouble and alarm, Der Tag 
indeed, but not the Day the atheist cynics feign. 
It is a "great and notable Day of the Lord," in 
whose sight are all days and ages. We do not 
know its inmost meaning. If we knew it all, we 
should be more than men. But we know enough 
to help us to believe more than we know, and thus 
at least to do what we believe to be our part. 
Who of us can fail now to learn our lesson? It 
is time, high time, to realize in matters of edu- 
cation the stern responsibilitj^ that rests on us 
for what our students study, how they study and 
why they study, to substitute the disciplined for 
the undisciplined mind, the trained for the un- 
trained, self-sacrifice for self-indulgence, so that 
all for whom we must give account shall be well 
prepared to play their part. The law of the mind, 
like the moral law, is the true glory of man. For 
a man to obey that law is to earn his freedom and 
to help save the freedom of the world. This is 
something higher than all "practical efficiency." 
In it alone is the guiding wisdom which must con- 
trol and purify everything, "efficiency" included. 



18 The War and Education 

the one force that can win a lasting victory for 
truth and freedom. 

Three roots hold up Dominion ; — 
Knowledge, Power. These twain are strong, 
But stronger still the third — Obedience. 
'Tis the tap-root still. 

Wrapped round the rock of Duty far below, 
That bids defy to all the winds that blow. 



THE IMMORTAL CONFLICT 



THE IMMORTAL CONFLICT 

I 

A boy without a memory can not be educated. 
A man without a memory needs some one to look 
after him, or he will go on repeating his mistakes, 
because he is always forgetting what he needs to 
remember, namely, that it is not the man who 
makes a mistake, but the man who repeats his 
mistakes, who is known for a fool. And a nation 
without a memory is in the same deplorable 
plight. To remember well the things that ought 
to be remembered and to profit by them is the rule 
for a safe, strong and wise life for every man and 
for every nation. 

The past is not something dead and gone. 
Whether men care to have anything to do with it 
or not, it remains a fact that the past has a great 
deal to do with us. Our parents and our parents' 
parents may be physically dead and gone; but 
without them we would not have been what we are 
and, indeed, would not be here today. Whatever 
has happened is a fact as inevitable as what now 
happens or as what will happen. The past is the 

21 



22 The War and Education 

parent, the producing cause of the present. Sci- 
ence has taught us by a thousand proofs that the 
universe is what it is because of what it was and 
that men are what they are now because of what 
men were before. And the big book of history, 
which is the world's memory, points the one 
"moral of all human tales" in revealing the truth 
that, no matter what else has changed, the human 
heart is still swayed by the same passions as ever. 
To learn well this lesson and never to forget it in 
the conduct of life, personal and national, is the 
one foundation for a sane education. 

And now, when the world seems turned up- 
side down, men need to remember these elemen- 
tary and elemental unchanging realities. For 
there are voices of confusion telling us that every- 
thing is changing, saying that little, if anything, 
of what we have held as true can be depended on 
for the future, and bidding us clutch at this or 
that panacea as the only thing to cure our ills. 
The past, they say, has little to teach us ; for we 
are Americans of the twentieth century and 
should promptly cut loose from bygone times, 
methods and ideas and set up a brand-new nation- 
al culture of our own. In their rejection of what 
they call "tradition," they are forgetting some- 



The Immortal Conflict 23 

thing; they are forgetting that the value of any- 
thing does not depend on whether it is old or new, 
but on whether it is trivial or important and on 
whether it is false or true. 

They are proposing to run American educa- 
tion, not on a record, but on a prospectus. They 
are, in fact, telling us to lose our memories and to 
forget what we shall forget at our peril, namel}^ 
that the past has our main lesson to teach us and 
that the man who does not see behind the lurid, 
blinding light of this world-war its deep-lying 
causes for decades and generations past, and on 
back to the origins, can not understand why this 
war happened, nor how to prevent its happening 
again, nor even what it is that is now happening. 
For he who does not remember what has gone 
before has little means of judging what is hap- 
pening now or of forecasting what will come 
after. It is no time to forget. It is the time 
to remember everything and to forget nothing. 

II 

Listen to a voice from long ago; yet so clear 
and near in its tones, it seems to be speaking now. 
"There is, we affirm," says Plato, "an immortal 
conflict now going on, and calling for marvellous 



24 The War and Education 

vigilance. In it our allies are the gods and all 
good spirits." He is speaking of the age-long 
conflict of truth and error. It is a clarion call 
of ancient freedom across the centuries to us, not 
only to the battle line in France, but to the armies 
of education in America. Listen to its echoes 
and you shall hear the story of Marathon and 
Salamis, of Leonidas at Thermopylae, of Hora- 
tius at the bridge, of Magna Charta, of the des- 
perate siege of Leyden, of Cromwell's Ironsides, 
of the Declaration of Independence and of the 
glorious defence of Verdun. Listen and you 
shall hear Lincoln's answering voice: "The fiery 
trial through which we pass will light us down, 
in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. 
We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best 
hope of earth." 

Let us listen again in the quiet of our schools 
and we shall hear the echoing thunders of the 
long-fought war, not ended yet, between the free- 
dom of knowledge and the debasing slavery of 
ignorance. And that warfare is the one business 
of education, the one reason why we need schools 
at all. What is the past for us ? It is Experience 
teaching — and teaching now. You recall the 
scene at the end of Goethe's Faust, where Faust 



The Immortal Conflict 25 

exclaims of the fleeting moment of his achieve- 
ment — " 'Tis past." Do you also recall who it 
was said in reply: 

" 'Tis past? a foolish word! 
That is to say 
As it had never been." 

It was the Devil. 

So our struggle in the schools, as it should be 
in our homes, is against ignorance, the old, an- 
cient, inveterate ignorance with which every 
generation is born into this world, the ignorance 
which must be first overcome and then enlight- 
ened by effort, hard effort, repeated effort, wisely 
guided effort, not alone by the exertion of the 
teacher, but on the part of the student as well, 
that our young recruits may be trained, trained, 
trained into an alert, disciplined, irresistible army 
of knowledge. 

It is not an easy task, for we are wrestling not 
against flesh and blood, but against the unseen 
powers of darkness, darkness intellectual and 
darkness moral. It is, then, our part in the "im- 
mortal conflict," ceaseless and strenuous, "now 
going on and calling for marvelous vigilance" 
more loudly than ever. It is no place for undis- 
ciplined minds or wild theorists, still less for 



26 The War and Education 

idlers, slouchers and slackers, and even less for 
false prophets dressed up in the uniform of the 
army of knowledge. 

Ill 

What is the way to win? This is the question 
that must be answered rightly if we are to keep 
faith with our countiy. There is just one way. 
It is to make the proved truths of experience the 
one basis for our efforts and the one test of all 
theories offered for our acceptance. It it the 
test of common sense. It is also the one scien- 
tific test, for science, as Huxley put it, is nothing 
else than "highly trained common sense" applied 
to scientific questions. Let us try by this test 
some of the plausible assertions which are being 
made. 

1. One is that there should be no "formal disci- 
pline" in studies. If this means that there should 
be no strict and regular training of the human 
mind, as the words naturally imply, the test is 
easily made. If it means something else, we have 
no need to consider it. All we need to do is to re- 
member the record of facts. This record tells us 
that in the world's contests the undisciplined mind 
has generally been beaten. 



The Immortal Conflict 27 

It has been one of the outstanding lessons of 
the war, notably so in the defense of Verdun. It 
is notable to-day all over our land in the newly- 
wakened spirit of discipline, of unquestioning 
obedience to duty, both in military training and 
in civil life. Why? In order to win — so that 
freedom may not perish from the earth. So we 
may trust the war to refute the critics of "formal 
discipline" and to discipline them too. 

2. Another assertion is that no student should 
be required to take any study which is not "in- 
teresting" to him, because if he does not like it, 
he will get little good from it. It is hard to take 
this seriously. What in the world is to be done, 
on this basis, with the many who find all studies 
and especially all study uninteresting? This be- 
guiling half-truth breaks on the hard rocks of 
facts. For it is not a matter of guess or supposi- 
tion, but of fact, that many things we have to do 
and know we ought to do are not pleasant in 
themselves. It is not "interesting" to do drudg- 
ery or to bear hunger or to keep the night-watch, 
chilled to the bone, in the battle-trenches. Duty 
is not always "interesting," but it is always duty. 
Life is not a series of pleasant elective choices, but 



28 The War and Education 

has in it the element of stem compulsion, and 
most of all 

When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 

And it is another fact, not fancy, that obedience 
to duty, however hard and distasteful at first, 
yields a most "interesting" joy of human life, the 
joy of the hard- won fight, and leads to the high- 
est freedom, the freedom of assured self-con- 
quest. Is there anything our country needs 
more? 

3. Some are telling us that vocational and tech- 
nical education is the one thing needful, because 
every one should be taught to earn his living. So 
he should. And nine-tenths of our youth must 
begin to earn their living early. We grant it. 
But this utilitarian proposal errs in forgetting 
some hard facts. For if this is practically all 
our youth are to have, then most of them are con- 
demned in advance to a form of industrial slav- 
ery, because they would thus be trained to be 
little more than animate tools for special tasks 
and would be largely cut off from their just 
chance to rise. This view overlooks the fact they 
are more than animate tools. They are human 
beings, our brothers and sisters, with minds and 



The Immortal Conflict 29 

hearts as well as hands. If in our just desire to 
prepare them for making their living we also 
unjustly fail to prepare them by good general 
schooling to make their lives better worth living, 
we shall create a huge proletariat of discontent 
to curse us, a grave menace to themselves and to 
the safety of our democracy. 

4. One more theory needs notice. It is that we 
are an independent nation living in the twentieth 
century and should therefore have a purely 
American national education without reference to 
the past. I know no loyal American who wants 
anything else than that our national history 
should be well studied by every boy and girl in 
the land and that Enghsh shall be the only lan- 
guage used in our elementary schools. Is this all 
there is in the proposal? Then we can all ac- 
cept it with enthusiasm. But it needs definition. 
For we have the right to ask whether it is meant 
that all elementary studies are to be exclusively 
national. Is geography to be confined to the 
geography of our land? How about arithmetic? 
Is there an American multiplication table? And 
what of "nature study" ? Are only American ani- 
mals to be noticed? Here is where the theory be- 
gins to crack. Our own language and history for 



30 The War and Education 

the sake of our national unity? Yes, in plenty, 
and then also the elements of universal knowl- 
edge — as much as we can get. 

Above the elementary education the theory ut- 
terly fails, and fails because its advocates forget 
or ignore the hard facts of history. We are part 
of the family of nations and heir to a great part 
of the world's heritage of freedom. They are 
forgetting that the struggle now in progress 
against an exclusive nationalism in culture is be- 
ing conducted by the allied freedom of the world. 
They are forgetting that an exclusively Ameri- 
can culture must tend either to absorb other sys- 
tems by incorporation or domination or, failing 
in that, to impair the vital unity of our interna- 
tional civilized freedom. 

It is curious, but not strange, that this question 
hinges so largely on the studies of language and 
history. The theory of a self-centered exclusive 
national culture inevitably leads to disparage- 
ment of foreign languages and foreign history, 
and especially of ancient history and the classics. 
This nationalistic theory, however, has a power- 
ful ally. Here are his words from the famous 
address of December 17, 1890: 



The Immortal Conflict 31 

Whoever has been through the gymnasium and has 
gone behind the scenes, knows where the trouble is. The 
trouble is, first of all, that we lack a truly national 
basis. We must take German as the foundation of the 
gymnasium, we must educate national young Germans 
and not young Greeks and Romans. We must depart 
from the basis which has stood for centuries, the old 
monastic education of the Middle Ages, in which Latin 
was the standard, and a little Greek. This is no longer 
the standard; we must make German the basis. 

This is the Kaiser's own statement, the avowed 
basis of his whole educational policy, the theory 
which has been at work wrecking German educa- 
tion for the last thirty years. Note in passing the 
reference to the "old monastic education." He 
knew, as everyone here knows, that this did not 
exist in the modern Gymnasium. Thus his ex- 
clusive Kultur excluded a truthful statement of 
historic fact. Do we want it, or anything like it? 
Not so long as the tree is judged by its fruit. 
Not so long as we have memories to remember 
what that Kultur has done. It is well we should 
also hear a statement on the other side, made 
September 10, 1915, by the Minister of Public 
Instruction of the French Republic: "The class- 
ical culture should remain the object of our ar- 
dent study, even if it were only for the reason 



32 The War and Education 

that it has transmitted to French thought the 
greater part of the great ideas for which we are 
now fighting." 

It is not a httle question. It is this : Shall the 
native tongues and literatures of ancient freedom, 
ancestral to our own, be abandoned? The Kaiser 
says Yes. France says No. There they stand. 
We too must stand on one side or the other. 
There is no escape except to hide in a paltering 
"neutrality." There is no "negotiated peace" 
here. There is no third theory to choose — ^noth- 
ing but a set of compromising, pitiable make- 
shifts. One of the two rivals must win and the 
other go imder. Which shall it be? 

IV 

It is great to be a true American ; it is greater 
to be a true man or woman here or anywhere. 
"That all men everywhere may be free" was 
Lincoln's prayer. Can we not lay aside all 
prejudice and then read our lesson in the fiery 
light around us ? That lesson is that no freedom 
is won or held without struggle and without self 
denial. That lesson is that mental and moral 
freedom is not won or held by any human being 
in any land without whole-minded training in the 



The Immortal Conflict 33 

fundametals of knowledge, be they pleasant or 
unpleasant at first, whole-souled obedience to 
duty, "interesting" or uninteresting, and whole- 
hearted devotion to the truth won and held by 
hard effort, not for money, place or power, but 
for the sake of living decently in a decent world, 
made fit to be free. 

In our education, as in the war, the "immortal 
conflict" is now on. In both the same cause is 
working. And in both may God defend the 
right ! 



FRANCE AND THE CLASSICS 



FRANCE AND THE CLASSICS 

[A French officer, visiting the United States during 
the war, was asked what France was fighting for. He 
answered: ''Pour hwmanite et les humanites." What 
he expressed with such graphic brevity was the spirit 
of France in education, the spirit of humane civilization 
as opposed to the spirit of gross and brutal material- 
ism. 

A remarkable utterance of the same spirit is found 
in the address printed below. A few days before Foch 
started his greater counter-offensive in July, when 
France was still at bay — with the Germans so close to 
Paris — the Minister of Public Instruction, the highest 
officer of education in the French Republic, spoke at 
the University of Montpellier to a class of young grad- 
uates of the Lycee on the spirit of French higher educa- 
tion in the present war. The authority of the speaker, 
the critical time at which he spoke, and the intimate 
connection of his theme with our own problems make 
the subjoined translation of his eloquent advocacy of 
the classical humanities very timely and valuable read- 
ing.] 

My dear friends: I feel a surprise mingled 
with deep emotion to find myself, after thirty 
3"ears, again in the enclosure of this ancient and 
glorious University of Montpellier and to realize 
that nothing has grown old of what there was 

37 



38 The War and Education 

here of permanent nature in its intellectual and 
moral life and of substantial character in its 
methods of teaching. 

There is here now the same tradition, repre- 
sented by other masters, of whom some are the 
sons of the teachers we have known formerly. 
Such a one is the eminent professor whom you 
have just heard, whose father I once more see 
enjoying the esteem and veneration of the pupils 
of our old Lycee. 

With what zeal and with what talent he has 
defended the humanities! And in this tragic 
hour such defence seems an anachronism. "Why 
do you talk of proportion and harmony," they 
say, "when the world is upside down? What con- 
nection is there between classic thought, so calm 
and serene, and the madness of warlike prepara- 
tion in which the world seems to wish to obliter- 
ate what remains of its wisdom? What connec- 
tion is there especially between this purely for- 
mal culture, between these ancient languages, 
which assure us of the supremacy of general ideas, 
and the scientific modern culture which is now 
turned toward the most formidable military pro- 
duction, and which will turn to-morrow toward 
that industrial equipment and practical applica- 



France and the Classics 39 

tion, which alone is capable of aiding us to main- 
tain competition on economic ground where we 
will have to defend ourselves and to triumph." 

Those who formulate these objections are su- 
perficial observers. They draw from certain ap- 
pearances hasty conclusions which the examina- 
tion of facts is far from demonstrating. Of 
course, the question may be raised whether or 
not Latin and Greek culture should continue to 
hold the first place in our studies. In other words, 
is the teaching of ancient languages to be consid- 
ered as the base of every complete education, with 
the other studies as accessories imposed by the 
necessities of modern life? 

With regard to this point, the conclusions of 
your teacher are absolutely clear: he thinks that 
French and foreign (modern) classic authors, 
even those the most imbued with antiquity, have 
not the same educative value as the Greek and 
Roman writers. Only an acquaintance with the 
ancient masters in their own language, only the 
habit of thinking in Latin and Greek, only re- 
search into ancient thought, seem to constitute the 
true exercise of the mind, the true method of 
assimilating the moral ideas and the noble senti- 
ments which form the man truly worthy of the 
name. 



40 The War and Education 

There are, therefore, no other true humanities 
than those that result from the habit of thinking 
in Greek and Latin, in order to write better in 
French. And it is very evident that, in spite of 
the very energetic effort to modernize teaching, 
this positive doctrine has not been entirely aban- 
doned. We know that the secondary education 
of girls — the most recent development of the 
State — still seeks out its way by endeavoring not 
to lose contact with the ancient languages, wheth- 
er that be in preparing partially for the bacca- 
laureate or by approximating a classical plan of 
study. We know that the same thought is mak- 
ing itself felt in the upper normal schools, where 
a modest place has just been made for the teaching 
of Latin. I do not say that these are solutions 
free from every criticism. But it is as it were a 
recognition that there has been a lack of our clas- 
sic methods and, at the same time, a silent com- 
pliment rendered to our old humanities. 

One thing remains beyond question: it is that 
for the formation of thought and of character, 
for the moral and civic education of the present 
age, we have to draw upon the old sources of 
Latin and Greek education. Your teacher has 
given the chief reason : Latin and Greek culture 



France and the Classics 41 

is not an ornament or a luxury, but even among 
those who least realize it, it is the basis of the for- 
mation of modern intellect. 

It is possible that classical education, carried 
to the very sources, must be reserved for the few — 
we may, indeed, say that with certainty. The 
conception of national public instruction for all 
children, together with a higher course purely 
classical intended for those pupils whom an intel- 
ligent selection designates, is not illogical. And 
at all events we must choose our authors and our 
books in order to train the citizens of a free 
democracy ; we must at least inculcate in them the 
principles of reason, of clearness, of energy in 
action, which form the basis of the ancient liter- 
atures and which will always be the best initia- 
tion of children and of men into the harsh neces- 
sities of contemporary life. 

But history testifies that these quahties are the 
possession of the Greeks and Romans, whose 
natural heirs we are — and history shows that for 
us they are the examples of vigor we must fol- 
low. It seems but yesterday that inmiortal dis- 
course On the Crown was written, wherein De- 
mosthenes, though conquered at Chasronea, dem- 
onstrated to an excited audience that the princi- 



42 The War and Education 

pies and obligations of a great people are inde- 
pendent of the chance fortune of battles, and that 
eternal duty is not always to be measured by the 
success of a day. After two thousand years an- 
other great Greek patriot, Venizelos, Prime Min- 
ister to a King unfaithful to the Allies, who tried 
to intimidate him by the thought of a possible de- 
feat of the Entente, replied proudly before giv- 
ing in his resignation, that he did not measure 
his support by the surety of the Allies' success. 
He, at least, more happy than Demosthenes, 
saved the honor of his country, and will be able 
to claim his part in the common victory for which 
we all pray. . . . 

Let us not commit the error, in this age of 
science and industry, of separating the humani- 
ties from scientific study. The services they can 
render each other cannot be overestimated. Our 
greatest classic writers have also been scientists 
— a Pascal astonishes us by his taste for scientific 
precision and by his observance of proportion and 
harmony, as well as by his vigorous logic and 
intensity of feeling. So it happens that if our 
great scientists are immortal, it is because they 
have at the same time been great writers. A 
Claude Bernard is known by a book which en- 



France and the Classics 43 

dures. And, without desiring to decry the scien- 
tific effort of the Germans, we can say that their 
diffuse researches for the purpose of enlightening 
human knowledge are not equal in value to the 
bright logic and admirable clearness which sum 
up and coordinate all the genius of an epoch. 

The fact is that the classic culture enfolds and 
animates all the manifestations of our national 
thought and activity. It is a perpetual lesson in 
good sense and vigor. It teaches the love of the 
good, the true, the beautiful, and of progress by 
means of method; it applies to all effort and all 
work; it enhances all the acts and deeds of men 
by the priceless gifts of grace and harmony; it 
makes them valued by reason of its appreciation 
of dignity, and by its own self-respect as well as 
by the respect of others. 

I know well that the world is now preoccupied 
with utilitarian ideas. Our universities, our 
scientific colleges especially, are endeavoring to 
put science in the service of the regions in which 
they are placed, and to extend themselves every- 
where, according to the needs and the resources 
of each place, in institutes of applied art. There 
is thus special adaptation in each region and var- 
iety in national unity. And these are conditions 



4i4i The War and Education 

highly favorable for the contest against German 
methods, whose all-pervading discipline consti- 
tutes the strength of their formidable competi- 
tion. But let us not lose sight of our own quali- 
ties, which make us loved for ourselves, and let us 
oppose to the perverse research into the enormous 
and the colossal that good taste and sense of 
proportion which are the characteristics of our 
genius, and which cannot be acquired by the sim- 
ple effort of mere imitation. 

French genius puts art in life everywhere. It 
gives a personal character to the most ordinary 
needs, to the most mechanical manual labor. 
There is an art of mixing mortar as well as of 
guiding a machine. Each one brings to the task 
his own manner and initiative. There is a saying 
that man must love his trade. It is not brutal 
discipline and mechanical organization which lead 
to that; it is individual taste and the stamp of 
personality on things. It is in that that we find 
united in the most obscure corners of workshops 
and fields the humanism and the manual trade 
that were considered opposites, while actually 
they lend the most admirable and happy support 
to each other. 

"But," you may say, "war has upset this har- 



France and the Classics 45 

mony, and we are a prey to the inevitable brutal- 
ity of force." Those who endanger their Uves 
and threaten the Hves of others, have they the 
leisure to think of the ideal, to count the blows 
that they give and take, to measure the value of 
their military action by the beauty and holiness 
of their cause?" 

Gentlemen, that is blasphemy against your kin, 
and mine, who are inscribed in the Golden Book 
of this University. Do you think that those of 
your teachers and of your great comrades who 
have faced death have not had two reasons for 
sacrificing themselves — one, patriotism, which is 
theirs in common with all Frenchmen; the 
other, an exact knowledge of the object of their 
sacrifice? Do you think that when death comes 
upon them in action, more than one does not have 
upon his lips some verses of Corneille he read the 
evening before, or the memory of a passage of 
Homer in which Hector, sacrificing himself to 
duty, and knowing that he must perish, never- 
theless welcomes his destiny with pride, and re- 
solves to die without complaint? 

May I recall here the word of a man of this 
University, a lieutenant in the infantry, who 
listened one evening in the trenches to the reflec- 



46 The War and Education 

tions of his men? "I," said one, "fight for my 
fields of grain." And another, "I for my wife and 
children"; and another, "I for my mountains." 
And the officer said gravely: "I fight for La 
Fontaine and Moliere: La Fontaine, the immor- 
tal heir of iEsop and of Phaedrus; Moliere, the 
immortal heir of Plautus and of Terence, and still 
further of Aristophanes and of Menander." Yes, 
my friends, acquaintance with art and beauty is 
an element of bravery in the teachers and pupils 
of the University. They know better than the 
others why they die, and if they know how to 
hand the torch which illumines them to the sol- 
diers whom they lead to the assault, it is because 
they have before their eyes an ideal, the secret of 
which has been a long time revealed to them 
through their study of the humanities. . . . 

Yes, let us keep all our advantages, and let us 
deny nothing of our university tradition. That 
is our strength for to-day and to-morrow. Let 
us keep our old inheritance of Gallic strength 
and daring, but let us not put aside the intellec- 
tual and moral discipline we owe to the ancient 
humanities. It is that which makes us to-day 
more French — that is to say, more human. It is 
that which has prepared us for victory by render- 



France and the Classics 47 

ing us worthy of it. It is that which to-morrow 
will cause our triumph to be acclaimed by all the 
peoples who see in our cause that of humanity, 
conscious alike of its duties and its rights. It is 
finally that which, when beneficent peace shall 
reign upon the earth, will conserve to our country, 
loved and admired by the world, the place of 
honor to which its past gives it all its titles, the 
place it will know well how to keep in the future, 
the first place. 



THE HUMANITIES AFTER THE WAR 



THE HUMANITIES AFTER THE WAR 



Napoleon wrote the epitaph of the eighteenth 
century, the age of artifieiahty. The war now 
ending is writing the epitaph of the nineteenth, 
the age of boasting. This period of vast achieve- 
ment was, as Frederic Harrison described it, the 
age of confident self -laudation par excellence. 
With characteristic aggressiveness it pushed over 
a bit into the twentieth, and perhaps for its pre- 
sumption has been violently stopped by a war 
waged with the very implements it had forged 
and had labelled with the stamp of Progress. 

Amid its manifold activities the most vigorous 
intellectual impulse was science, at first mainly 
in the form of knowledge as such and later more 
notably in its myriad applications to himian use. 
Through this practical development, which grew 
in strength as the century advanced, the mater- 
ial side of human life was enriched as never be- 
fore, and science, whether pure or applied, so 
long as controlled for human welfare conferred 
enormous benefits, and if morally uncontrolled, 

51 



52 The War and Education 

as of late, wrought fearful evil. In the latest 
perversion of its true use all the three major 
sciences have been dragged into the service of 
death. Physics, with chemistry helping, gave 
us the submarine assassin, chemistry the murder- 
ous gases, and biology furnished germs to poison 
man and beast in Roumania. Yet these things, 
devilish as the uses to which they were put, were 
not in themselves necessarily evil. Conceivably 
they might have been used for commendable ends ; 
the anthrax germ as an antitoxin, the murderous 
gases to destroy vermin and the submarine even 
to transport missionaries. It is clearly seen that 
the imminent danger of their misuse lies, not in 
the nature of science, but in the motive which 
prompted the misuse by making such devices 
easily available in the hands of unscrupulous men 
or nations. The execration of mankind has fallen 
justly on those who thus misapplied applied sci- 
ence, and a clamorous demand is justly made that 
it shall henceforth be applied only to humane 
ends, for the reason that when applied to inhuman 
ends it becomes the hired accompHce of immoral- 
ity. It is a dreadful fact that while the guilt of 
introducing this misuse in the world- war rests on 
Germany, the leader in applied science, our side 



The Humanities After the War 53 

has been driven to use some of these agencies in 
retaliation. Apphed science has thus freely fur- 
nished mercenaries to either side. Its devices 
have been for sale to any buyer. But as honor 
and decency are things not for sale, it is not sur- 
prising that men are now incredulous in regard 
to the dependability of science taken by itself, 
especially of applied science, as a safe moral fac- 
tor in education and in the resultant civilization 
for which education prepares. 

Is high intelligence separable from honor and 
decency? The Greek thinkers said No. Recent 
German thought says Yes.^ There is no need to 
argue in this presence that although there are 
notable instances of high intellectuality combined 
with low morality and although exemption from 
moral restraint has been at times supposed to be 
a necessary condition of intellectual freedom, 
men of high intelligence and low morals are 
nevertheless dangerous to human society, per- 
sons to be watched rather than trusted, persons 
whose dangerousness is intensified by their degree 
of intelligence, and who should therefore be so- 
cially and educationally reprobated or at least 

^ For a lucid review of this question see Emile Boutroux's 
Oxford lecture on "The Relation between Thought and 
Action," Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1918. 



54s The War and Education 

"interned." And in this time of the world's trial 
there is no need to argue that governments or na- 
tions of this high-low type cannot be trusted in 
the family of nations. All the proof we need is to 
be found in the undeniable fact that when trust 
vanishes, civilized relations collapse. And we 
must have a civilization which is not collapsible. 
Whether or no decent morals are essential to high 
intellectuality is therefore a question of little 
importance compared with the fact that human 
behavior resting on decent morals is essential to 
the world's safety. 

Can education in science, considered by itself 
alone, and especially in applied science, be surely 
depended on to foster this humane behavior in 
men and to ground it, not on considerations of 
mere convention or expediency, but on honor and 
decency? The war has answered this momentous 
question in the negative. While not at all a con- 
demnation of science, but of its abuses in applica- 
tion, it is nevertheless a demand that in all its uses 
it shall henceforth stand always as the ally and 
never as the enemy of man's moral welfare. 

There is some hard travelling to do before this 
end is reached. To begin with, science will need 
to be taught purely as science, without admixture 



The Humanities After the War 55 

of other things. Otherwise its true nature is ob- 
scured and men will be misled as to its meaning. 
For example, applied science has lately been en- 
tangled at times in serving sordid purposes, so 
that its own freedom as science has been hampered 
and its beneficial influence impaired. To make 
industrial processes scientific is a most worthy 
end, but to commercialize science is to degrade it. 
The two have not always been distinguished.. 
They must be distinguished if applied science is 
to be the best applied science or is to remain 
science at all. 

Pure science also has been at times entangled 
in extraneous things. Take an example from 
biology. "The strong must survive," "the weak 
must perish," "it is the law of life," "Nature heads 
up things in an autocratic way," "war is a normal 
condition for a nation seeking to realize its own 
life," "war is a biological necessity," — such are 
the utterances of recent German thinkers. But 
this is not biology proper. It is biology infected 
by a delusive theory of human society and leaping 
to the inference that the law of the jungle is of 
course the law of the home, the commimity and 
the state. It is one of the main causes which has 
provoked the extreme and angry answer of social- 



56 The War and Education 

ism. For biology, then, as pure biology and the 
mother-science of medicine, the champion of the 
weak, serving humane ends and itself uncontami- 
nated by any infection, a broad road is open to 
endless beneficient progress. But if that road is 
missed, some devious way must be travelled. 

Given, then, science as science, true to its own 
standards, debased by no sordid use and mingled 
with no alien substance, its real function as an 
educational subject of immense value becomes 
clearer. It is to acquaint Man with the truths of 
Nature and the beneficent uses these truths may 
serve. It thus becomes a question of high im- 
portance as to how education in science, espe- 
cially in the earlier formative stages, may remain 
purely scientific and may at the same time help 
in developing its students humanely and morally. 
This importance becomes clearer, both because of 
certain considerations external to science and 
because the chief object in the earlier formative 
teaching is not the development of science, but 
the development of the student. The other 
comes later. It is not too much to assert that 
when science is first studied by these younger 
students, not as the analysis of developed mod- 
ern results nor for immediate practical use, but 



The Humanities After the War 57 

as the historical panorama which shows definitely 
the successive stages of its development by human 
discoverers who were benefactors and even mar- 
tyrs and heroes of mankind, it is science thus 
studied which is most likely to show them how 
science actually came to be what it is, to yield 
knowledge in vital form (so to speak, in a "nas- 
cent state"), to waken livelier interest, to show 
its importance as a part of human experience, 
and to reveal its grandeur as an ever-growing 
power for human welfare. If our youth start in 
science the other way, the humanizing and moral- 
izing value is apt to seem remote, intangible and 
even unreal, and the importance of guiding all 
scientific applications toward beneficent ends is 
not so likely to be suggested, much less to be ob- 
viously implied. 

Take another point. To put the right thought 
in the right words is admittedly a mark of the 
best teaching. So long as language is the one 
general instrument of thought, as it has been since 
civilization began and promises to be so long as 
civilization lasts, its necessity in teaching science 
and everything else is self-evident.. In view of 
this it is appalling that many of our teachers, 
some of them in universities, are in a sense illiter- 



58 The War and Education 

ate. They cannot use language well and there- 
fore lose power to teach adequately either in the 
class room or in their writings. Specialization 
without a good literary training has more and 
more restricted them in power to say well what 
they think. Lacking literary vision or assured 
mastery of English, they are forced to talk al- 
most entirely in the dialect of their specialties. 
Anyone who is acquainted with our doctoral 
theses, especially in applied science, knows how 
serious this illiteracy is. And it is utterly for- 
eign to the nature of science. Of course the 
needed technical terms must be used to tell what 
only technical terms can state. But this should 
be the limit of such usage. It has been fearfully 
overdone. If it sufficed a Newton to define the 
atom as "the least part of matter" (whether 
rightly or wrongly is of no consequence here), 
our writers may well follow his lead and use 
plain English for all plain English will say. It 
will add to their ease, freedom and human tone, 
besides making their statements less involved 
and more attractive. Their writings will then 
have a better chance to be read. 



The Humanities After the War 59 

II 

What has all this to do with the educational 
future of the humanities in our land after the 
war? Much in every way. I have taken the in- 
stance of science because it is so conspicuous just 
now, because it is so important and because there 
are many who feel that a training in science, 
especially in applied science, is a sufficient basis, 
perhaps even the main basis for our coming edu- 
cation. I have tried to show that science does 
better as a humanizing and moralizing force in 
education when it uses the helps of history, lan- 
guage and literature in order to make its appeal 
to young students more fully human, and that 
without these valuable contacts it loses much of 
its persuasiveness in teaching and the vivid sense 
of its neighborhood to other fields of knowledge. 

What of our coming education in the humani- 
ties themselves? and especially in language, the 
instrument of man's thought, in literature, the 
mirror of his moods, and in history, the record 
of his deeds. They, too, will need to be reso- 
lutely true to their own function, which is to ac- 
quaint Man with himself and with all the bene- 
fits this acquaintance brings. Some think it is 



60 The War and Education 

a useless training, something intangible and un- 
practical, or at best a pleasant accomplishment 
rather than a solid attainment. Yes, it is in- 
tangible in a way, yet not more intangible than 
the sense of justice, truth or freedom. And it is 
perhaps unpractical for many of the quick and 
obvious utilities. But what of the greater utili- 
ties? Was it "useful" to the world in this war 
that the swiftest voluntary response to the first 
call of freedom came from the colleges and no- 
tably from the older homes of humanistic stud- 
ies? Some may have thought these playful, care- 
free fellows did not know very well how to live, 
but at least they have shown that they knew how 
to die. Their education, science included and the 
old humanities included too, and not some mili- 
tary or technical training, is what their letters 
told us was a preparation which stood them in 
good stead. Has the war given vis any reason to 
doubt the worth of their training? Has it not 
rather emphasized it? The example of such men 
indicates anew that the value of the humanities, 
like the true value of science, is to be tested by 
their fidelity to their proper function and by their 
wholesome results in human life. 

As for our own language, it seems needless to 



The Humanities After the War 61 

say it should be well understood and well used as 
our chief instrument of thought. The war prop- 
erly adds the demand that it shall be the sole lan- 
guage in our primary schools, and shall thus 
become a stronger unifying force in our nation 
and a stronger bond of union with the whole Eng* 
lish-speaking world. The better unification of 
English itself would be another great help to 
this end. And if it is impossible or for any rea- 
son inadvisable to obhterate regional or social 
variations, at least those who call themselves edu- 
cated could strive to lesson the difference in their 
own usage and thus gradually establish a better 
common standard. For if educated English 
speech, here and the world over, shall become 
very nearly one, its influence will spread widely 
through the thousand utterances of voice and 
print, and good English may yet become the 
common English of the world. 

How shall this be promoted in the schools? 
Some say "By studying English alone." There 
are cases where this result has happened. But 
they are few in number and prove nothing for 
the mass of students. The fact that a boy does 
not or will not study a foreign tongue does not 
prove him another Lincoln. The war does not 



62 The War and Education 

alter this. Nor has school-study of modern lan- 
guages coordinate to our own produced an appre- 
ciably better use of EngUsh. It has oftener dis- 
figured English with strange locutions. The 
war has not helped to remove this difficulty. The 
fact that these highly important modem tongues 
are coordinate and not fundamental to our own 
is the important persistent fact which cannot be 
ignored in this connection. Brothers and sisters 
do not get their fundamental traits from each 
other, but from their common ancestors. We 
need not, then, be surprised that the teachers of 
English and of modern languages constantly as- 
sure us that the best way is to study the classics. 
Our latest school and college records confirm this 
as a fact, a fact no more likely to be changed by 
the war than the fact that mathematics is a fine 
preparation for physics and history a fine prepa- 
ration for political science. In regard to the 
modem languages themselves, there is a marked 
change due to the war. The available facts indi- 
cate that German has lost fully three-fourths of 
its students, French has gained strongly and 
Spanish substantially. That America will pre- 
fer French, as she has preferred France, may be 
expected. It is not likely that German, which 



The Humanities After the War 63 

had been artificially stimulated anyway, will fully 
regain its former importance. It is too early to 
say whether the large gain in Spanish will last 
or will increase much more. Of the classical lan- 
guages Greek is gaining a little here and there 
and Latin is gaining considerably. The main 
trend is toward the closely related Latin, French 
and Spanish — to name them in the order of their 
total enrolments. It should not be forgotten that 
Latin actually has more students than are found 
in all the foreign modern languages, and that this 
leading position is being strengthened by gains 
made since the war began. 

The war has also called new attention to the 
classics as the fundamental linguistic and literary 
bond of Western civilization. The continued 
effort of the Kaiser throughout his reign, now 
closed, to hack and hew this old bond in the in- 
terest of a nationalistic Kultur released from in- 
ternational ties has been the most marked feature 
of his educational Thirty Years' War. This 
war also reveals France as standing against him 
in this. The stirring address of Lafferre,^ Minis- 
ter of Public Instruction, delivered at Montpel- 

^ Translated in the New York Evening Post of September 
21, 1918. See page 37. 



64 TJie War and Education 

lier a few days before Foch launched his counter- 
offensive, shows how ardently France cares for 
the old humanities, and all the more when the 
Germans are close to Paris. The situation re- 
veals two warring tendencies ; intolerant national- 
istic unity and tolerant international community. 
Whichever of these is best for the world will nat- 
urally be best for our coming education. Is there 
any good reason why America should not stand 
here with France? and with England? and with 
all who believe in an educational League of Na- 
tions to uphold humane studies? With the per- 
sistence of separate languages and nationalities, 
and the addition of new nations, all needing 
strong common bonds, the need for a common 
humanistic element of union will increase. 

A word is in place here as to the need of teach- 
ing literature as literature, not as anything else, 
and of teaching it humanely and nobly. Thus in 
teaching an author the real object is to introduce 
the student to the author. If anything pedantic, 
mechanical or extraneous interferes with this, the 
student is ill-taught. If taught as "the criticism 
of life" (only one of its phases), it degenerates 
into cheap philosophizing, whereas when viewed 
as the picture of life, it has a chance to reveal all 



The Humanities After the War 65 

its values. When infected with the germs of 
social decadence, it becames poisonous. Our 
literature, thanks to the war, is now somewhat 
cleansed. A lot of bad books are suddenly out of 
date. The finer aspects of life, now vividly in 
view, suggest that a better understanding of the 
nature of literature is desirable. The demand is 
heard that oddity or caprice shall no longer be 
taken as evidence of genius, that literature shall 
bear a nobler aspect and that the "golden mean" 
of the masters in expression shall again be the 
Golden Rule for style. It may even happen that 
Plato's canon of the true, the beautiful and the 
good will again become the canon of letters and of 
art also. If so, a better age is dawning. It is 
devoutly to be hoped that our schools will be con- 
ducted in this spirit, and down to the last details, 
so that, for instance, even our school readers shall 
generally be worth reading. 

Our third study is history, a momentous sub- 
ject by itself and more so now because of the flat 
contradictions we have met in regard to recent 
events of the first importance. History is the 
recorded memory of mankind. It is Experience 
teaching — and teaching now. What our own 
memory means to us, history means to the civi- 



66 The War and Education 

lized world. It is still true after the war, as be- 
fore it, that a boy without a memory camiot be 
educated. It is hard to believe any school-study 
is of greater consequence. If the war teaches 
us anything about historical teaching, it teaches 
that we need to know the record of what has hap- 
pened. We must therefore, first of all, learn 
history as history, not as politics, not as philoso- 
phy, and not as science. If the accounts are in 
conflict or are otherwise unreliable, we must know 
what the existing accounts are before we can 
judge them. Their value to the young student 
therefore lies in allowing him to read the story of 
the past as the writers told it and not as altered by 
editors. Such records, with the originals unalter- 
ed, in spirit at least, when sunmiarized in text 
books, compends and compilations, are the only 
safe provisional basis for later judgment. The 
necessity for this is forced upon us by the fact 
that history has been falsified at times by writers 
who are so anxious to "see things as they are" that 
they cannot see things as they were. This is not 
the limit of the evil, because some of them uncon- 
sciously or consciously see the past mainly in the 
light of the present and as colored by their own 
prepossessions. This has been notorious for the 
last generation in Germany. So let the new 



The Humanities After the War 67 

"science of ancient history," made in Germany, 
furnish us an example. In his Vergangenheit 
und Gegenwart, published the year before the 
war, Wendland thus explains what Philip of Ma- 
cedan did to Greek democracy: 

"It is now common knowledge how Philip con- 
solidated his state, kept his dangerous northern 
neighbors in their proper territorial limits, cre- 
ated a citizen army of his people and an officers' 
corps of the nobility. . . . The temperate and 
careful character of Philip's dealing with the 
Athenian Demos shows that he pursued no ruth- 
less policy of aggrandizement. . . . This serves 
admirably the purpose of training one in politi- 
cal thinking, helps to guard one against the influ- 
ences of trivial talk about morality and politics, 
and makes one realize that such a conflict cannot 
be settled by international arbitration. It should 
be emphasized that Demosthenes was actuated in 
his condemnation of the enemy by motives of 
patriotic hate. Furthermore one should strongly 
emphasize the superior merits of a thorough sys- 
tem of monarchical government and of military 
discipline."^ 

^ See Professor Knipfing's article on "The War and The 
Teaching of Ancient History/' pp. 301-302, Ohio Teach- 
ers' Journal, March, 1918. 



68 The War and Education 

There is more; but this is enough. And this 
"thinly disguised eulogy" of Prussian imperial- 
ism is put forth as history! For "Philip" read 
"Wilhelm" and for the "Athenian Demos" read 
"France." What more cogent reason could we 
have for insisting that in our education the rec- 
ords of history should be allowed to speak for 
themselves and that no one who falsifies their 
meaning shall be known as a historian? Is it 
"trivial" to talk of morality in connection with 
politics? So this writer thinks, and thus rein- 
forces our conviction that the teaching of history, 
like the teaching of anything else, when it fails 
to respect moral standards is dangerous to civili- 
zation and fails to give assurance that it is genu- 
ine history. 

Ill 

Language, literature and history — the three 
primary humanities in education and the source 
from which the other humanities spring. Science 
also, using their light as a help in teaching, finds 
its own distinctive truths more readily understood 
and exerts fuller moral power without losing a 
particle of its scientific integrity. There is one 
more of the humanities; — behind them all and 



The Humanities After the War 69 

connecting them all, the study Aristotle called 
"the only liberal science"* — philosophy. Here 
again the war has opened a new volume. The 
divorce of thought and action, and the cynical 
atheism built thereon, we may now hope will be 
regarded not only as immoral, but as irrational. 
If so, philosophy will again become a great blend- 
ing power in our university studies. 

In conclusion, then, does not the war teach 
clearly that education in the humanities, when 
true to its own type, is an integral part of the 
history of human freedom? Wherever they have 
been mechanized, their spirit has been cramped. 
The classical education of Germany was rigor- 
ously thorough. Yet it often missed something 
which enlightened the schools of France, Great 
Britain and America. That something is what 
makes the difference between mechanical preci- 
sion and the joy of life. A plant pressed in 
a herbarium may keep its outline, but it will 
not live. The indestructible value of the clas- 
sics for American schools and colleges is not as 
science, but as humanism. 

There is no time here to go into the vital ques- 
tion of what shall guarantee the nobility of our 

* Metaphysics, I 2. 



70 The War and Education 

teaching by making primal moral truth the basis 
on which it shall rest. Science and the humani- 
ties and philosophy, truly taught, are certain to 
suggest this guarantee, but are not enough to 
secure it. They may be made a help toward vir- 
tue, but they are not virtue. They may also be 
misused for inhuman ends. Is any lesson of the 
war clearer? Will democracy of itself secure it? 
It may help — but will it help enough? There 
were old democracies, sometimes noble, sometimes 
cruel as autocracies. The Athenian treatment of 
Melos was like the German treatment of Bel- 
gium.^ And what of Russian democracy now? 
Will it tame the wild beast in man? Will voca- 
tional studies suffice to save us? Some seem to 
think so. Yet they overlook the plain fact that 
to send our youth into vocational studies alone 
is to cut them off from their just chance for 
knowledge, to condemn them in advance to indus- 
trial serfdom and to create a huge proletariat of 
discontent. Will the newer psychology help us 
with its insistence that mental discipline is ab- 
surd and injurious and that no student should 
have to study a subject he finds "uninteresting"? 
Will this enfeebling sentimental theory be use- 

^Thucydides, V 84-112. 



The Humanities After the War 71 

ful in the moral crises of life "when Duty 
whispers low, Thou must"? Will money, place 
and power, held up as goals of education and con- 
sequent goals of social endeavor, help us? The 
war has wrecked such theories. What else is 
left but the Golden Rule of Christ? 



VOCATIONAL, AND GENERAL 
EDUCATION 



VOCATIONAL AND GENERAL 
EDUCATION 



As war is an abnormal and peace the normal 
condition of civilized man, the end of the world- 
war brings us face to face with the problem of 
resmning our education on normal lines with as 
much added wisdom as the recent experience of 
war has given us. Whatever was really true 
in education before the war, whether perceived 
fully or not, is true now, with the difference that 
the war, notwithstanding all its confusion, has 
given us a chance to perceive truth in the light of 
new experience. We should therefore pay little 
heed to the voices of confusion telling us that 
everything has changed and that nothing in edu- 
cation will hereafter be the same as before; nor 
should we listen to the voices of stolid indifference 
telling us that everything in education will be the 
same as before. 

Neither of these statements can be trusted, and 
it is our task to find out clearly and promptly 
what it is that is changing and what is not chang- 

75 



76 The War and Education 

ing. We must have something on which we can 
depend to keep our vision and our plans clear 
and steady. Like a wise pilot in an aeroplane, 
we shall therefore need to know not only that our 
machine will fly but that it is safely stabilized for 
flight, so that we may know how to move to our 
objective without disaster to our machine or our- 
selves. It may be easier to fly than to steer, but 
just now steady steering is more needed in our 
education than is enthusiastic flying. It is time 
for cool heads and trained common sense. Other- 
wise the confusion around us will bewilder men 
and make them lose confidence in education. 
Spinoza said that in studying any problem in 
order to get at the truth it was man's duty "not 
to deplore and not to denounce, but to under- 
stand," — ^not to be carried away by emotional 
prejudices, not to shed heat but light on any 
problem. If we add to this the unshaken purpose 
of viewing education as a whole and also in the 
relation of its parts to the whole and to each 
other, it then becomes possible to see clearly how 
our entire education in all its parts may be 
planned on the best basis for the future. 

There is no time here to argue in detail as to 
what things are changing or into what they are 



Vocational and General Education 77 

changing, or as to what things are not changing. 
We may, however assert with some confidence 
that the laws of nature and of human nature re- 
main as they were before the war. The war has 
not repealed the law of gravitation, the proces- 
sion of the seasons or the continual sequence of 
day and night. It has not changed the law of 
the mind. Yet though it has not changed our 
nature, it is changing our attitude from one of 
acquiescence in the easy-going view of life into 
something more noble. The new force evoked by 
the war is the newly quickened sense of discipline 
and duty. If it pervades our land, it will save 
and strengthen our education for centuries. But 
many men have short memories and easily forget 
what we supposed they had learned. The war 
once over, it is to many something to be forgotten 
as soon as possible. Therefore the new impulse 
must be used while it is still vivid, if it is to be 
used successfully as the regenerating force for 
all our education from bottom to top. It should 
be recognized and embodied in every course of 
study and in every act of teaching and learning. 
This is the way to save its full power for the 
future. To do so will add untold gain in moral 
and material wealth to our nation. Not to do so 



78 The War and Education 

will be to miss the greatest chance we may ever 
hope to have. Never before has so heavy a bur- 
den of responsibility been laid on those in charge 
of our education. 

II 

Our education follows two leading aims and 
therefore has two main divisions, education for 
knowledge and education for action. The first 
aims primarily to train the individual to the best 
intelligence. The second aims primarily to 
train the individual to the best practice of his oc- 
cupation. The aim of the first is universal, and 
its range is limited only by the capacity of the 
individual. The aim of the second is particular, 
and its range is limited both by the capacity of 
the individual and the character of his intended 
occupation. The first is called general or, in its 
higher levels, liberal education. The second is 
called vocational or, in its higher levels, technical 
or professional education. Though each in some 
degree shares in the aim of the other, the primary 
aim of the first is to know and of the second 
is to do. Each is necessary to the welfare of the 
other, and both are therefore necessary in our 
system of education. 



Vocational and General Education 79 

The general education has its three successive 
levels, — primary, secondary and higher, and the 
vocational education is also gradually differenti- 
ating, with some overlappings, into three succes- 
sive levels of vocational, technical and profes- 
sional, which as yet only partly correspond to 
the three levels of general education. It is not 
to be expected that they will ever closely cor- 
respond with and emerge from the three levels of 
general education, but it is likely that they will 
do so to a greater extent than heretofore. All 
these, when placed in rational relation to each 
other, form a complete, harmonious, mutually 
supporting system of education, to which all 
other extraneous forms are related as derivatives 
or combinations. It is only when their true re- 
lation is disregarded that friction and consequent 
antagonism arise. To organize and administer 
both the general and vocational divisions and 
main subdivisions in their true relation is now 
the largest and most pressing task we have to 
perform. Nothing should be allowed to stand 
in the way of doing it promptly and thoroughly. 
The interests at stake are priceless. Delay adds 
to our dangers. Error here is fundamental and 
multiplies itself a thousand fold, with consequent 



80 The War and Education 

waste of money, friction in operation, failure in 
teaching and discouragement in learning. 

Ill 

Nine-tenths of our boys and girls must start 
early to earn their living. They should therefore 
have the opportunity for enough vocational train- 
ing to prepare them for their purpose. This, it 
seems to me, is the solid truth on which vocational 
training rests. It would be foolish to deny it. 
But, like some other truths, it is not all the truth. 
Nine-tenths of our boys and girls, yes, ten-tenths, 
are human beings with minds and hearts as well 
as hands. Whenever any of them must begin to 
prepare directly to earn a living, they should have 
the chance for good vocational training of course. 
Is this all they are to have? Will their vocational 
training be injured if they also have as much 
good general education as they have the chance to 
take? Will it not rather help their vocational 
studies? In fact, will not many of them do bet- 
ter on the basis of general education alone? Prac- 
tical results seem to prove this. Just as surely as 
general knowledge is the best preparation for 
acquiring particular knowledge or skill, so surely 
their general education, even though scanty, will 



Vocational and General Education 81 

be a help in vocational education and in vocation- 
al labor. Owing to our present imperfect co- 
ordination of the two, much friction arises. But 
this should and can be largely remedied. Mean- 
while we may rest assured that good general 
schooling is a great help in all practical studies. 

There is a more serious aspect of the question. 
If nine-tenths of our youth are to get nothing or 
little more than vocational studies, they are cut 
off from their just chance for as much general 
education as they can take, and are thereby largely 
cut off from their just chance to rise by means of 
the help this broader education would give them. 
They are condemned in advance to industrial 
serfdom and are on the way to form a huge pro- 
letariat of discontent, the gravest menace our 
democracy can encounter. They have the same 
right to a square deal as any other Americans, 
even if they do not happen to have the same abili- 
ties or home advantages. Equal educational op- 
portunity for all who can take it is their right. 
To do anything to reduce that opportunity is to 
deprive them of part of their rights. I am not 
a socialist and yet I think the socialists are right 
in their demand that equality of provision for the 
best general education should be available for 



82 The War and Education 

every boy and girl in the land who can take it, and 
that nothing in our education should look toward 
ecenomic slavery. Do we want a race of serfs 
and peasants in our land? If we do, a sure means 
to this end is to reduce the chances for general 
education. 

The greatest peril to which our education is 
now exposed is the progressive reduction and de- 
terioration of general education, the birthright of 
every American youth, through the intolerant 
encroachment of so-called "practical" studies. 
The demand that everyone should have a good 
chance to be trained to make a living is just. But 
so long as "the life is more than the meat," so 
long will making a good life be greater than 
making a good living. Man cannot live without 
bread, but "man shall not live by bread alone." 
Owing to our strong practical instincts and the 
material needs of our life, there is no danger that 
vocational studies of all grades, from elementary 
to highest, will lack support. They will get it. 
But we are now facing the disintegration of our 
general education. It simply cannot live if it is 
to be put in unrestrained hostile rivalry with 
"practical" studies. Some may ask whether it is 
worth maintaining. The answer is very easy. It 



Vocational and General Education 83 

is supremely worth maintaining because it is es- 
sential to general intelligence, because it is the 
one sure guarantee that all appHed or practical 
studies will be steadied by true standards of 
knowledge, because it is the one sure means of 
opening the way of highest opportunity to all 
our youth who can make the journey, and be- 
cause it is the best practical safeguard of our 
democratic freedom. It is always harder to 
save the invisible than the visible things ; but the 
invisible things, like truth and freedom, are what 
make human life worth living. What greater 
duty, then, rests upon all who care for education 
than to end the antagonism between vocational 
and general education by placing them in their 
true and beneficial relation of mutual support. 

These remarks indicate some of the perils of 
severing vocational from general education. If, 
then, they should not be severed, except when it 
is necessary to begin vocational studies in order 
to make a living, how ought they to be related? 
The question is not easy to answer off-hand nor 
in brief fashion. Before a definitely practical 
answer can be given, there must be a closer agree- 
ment as to what we mean by vocational and gen- 
eral education and a better application of the 



84f The War and Education 

agreement in practice. There is not yet a suffi- 
cient working agreement, so far as I am aware, 
on these highly important points. Nevertheless, 
some points are clear ; enough to make plain what 
these two types of education ought to be and 
may become. 

First of all, the general education, because of 
its universality of aim and spirit must be the one 
and only foundation for all our education. Take, 
for example, our primary schools. Here all the 
youth of our nation receive or should receive their 
first elements of general knowledge, — our na- 
tional language, our national history and other 
studies. The secondary and higher general edu- 
cation should rise on this base and be developed 
securely, definitely and to their fullest extent. 
Second, the vocational education should always 
presuppose as much general education as will not 
curtail the time necessary for proper vocational 
training. In the same way the technical and 
professional education should rest on a still more 
extensive basis of general education. Thus, in 
brief, the vocational and general education at 
every stage are most harmoniously related to each 
other when the vocational training, intended for 
a definite particular end in each case, emerges 



Vocational and General Education 85 

from and rests upon as large an amount of gen- 
eral education as is practicable to obtain. In this 
way the general precedes and prepares for the 
special education and the special education 
emerges from, rests on and benefits by the gen- 
eral ability developed through the general edu- 
cation. Each thus helps the other. If these 
considerations are sound, it is clear that we have 
a great deal to do before the happy result can be 
accomplished. Our general education must be 
rigorously simplified and centered in the few 
studies which experience shows are of most fun- 
damental value for the development of all-round 
intelligence. The students in school and college 
will need to learn that there is no education for 
them without their own active and regular exer- 
tion in study. The newly wakened sense of dis- 
cipline and duty must be their powerful helper 
here, as it must be for all of us who teach. Given 
a simpler course of general education, based on 
a few required fundamental studies well and 
amply taught, as well as diligently studied, the 
problem of our general education is solved. It 
will also be put in a position to furnish something 
more definite and dependable at each stage as a 
preparation for vocational, technical and profes- 



86 The War and Education 

sional courses. The vocational experts must set- 
tle what actually constitutes good vocational 
training of each kind. So far as I know, a com- 
mon agreement has not yet been reached. It is 
imperative that such an agreement should be 
reached and reached soon. Of one thing we may 
be sure, namely, that unless these studies are 
planned so as to allow as much general educa- 
tion as is practicable and to arrange vocational 
studies so that they emerge from general educa- 
tion, instead of supplanting it, the present danger 
both to general and vocational education will 
increase. 

I do not here enter into such important ques- 
tions as the relation of the workshop to the school 
or the modes of vocational teaching, whether from 
example to rule or from rule to example, or on 
anything else of vocational technique. But I do 
urge on all friends of education the vital impor- 
tance of using the new-born sense of discipline 
and duty as the impulse which must save all our 
schools of every sort. Why listen to the nonsense 
that mental discipline is absurd and injurious? I 
know some psychologists — ^not all psychologists 
— ^hold that we know nothing of the mind or even 
know that we have a mind, and that all we know 



Vocational and General Education 87 

IS "animal behavior." Even if this were so, would 
it not be well that we animals should be trained to 
behave as well as possible? And why listen to 
the nonsense that no student should have to study 
any subject he finds "uninteresting"? Here the 
truth that every study should be so taught that 
the student shall see its value is perverted into the 
untruth that no study should be taught before the 
student sees its value. The answer to such theo- 
ries is written in the world's history. The undisci- 
plined mind has generally been beaten. The mas- 
ter key to success in studies, general or vocational, 
as to success in life, is hard work, steady work, 
honest work, intelligent work. 

I have said our two-fold division of education 
rests on training for knowledge and training for 
action. There is a third term of human life be- 
hind knowledge and action, — the primal impulse 
of both. Some call it Feeling. Some call it 
Heart. If we once get hold of this motive in 
students and teachers, we shall find the force 
which, acting with friendliness, consideration and 
sympathy, will show us the way to teach any 
study and also to maintain our general education 
in its full integrity and to unite both general 
and vocational education in one mutually sup- 
porting system. 



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